Centre/Center

Kelly L. Green is a freelance writer living in Ajax, Ontario.

Another novel about American baby-boomer angst over the 1960s legacy and
the repercussions of Vietnam, you say? But wait, this one is really
good. In fact, it is a wonderful example of a novel that both
illuminates and transcends the plight of a particular group of people in
a particular place at a particular time.

Centre/Center is actually three short novels about a group of people,
related to each other by blood and circumstance, and the seminal events
in a two-decade span of their lives, from 1969 to 1989. The eldest
daughter in a midwestern American family sets off to a college in
California, where she initiates a chain of relationships and events that
vividly illustrate the unrest and confusion of the era.

Interestingly, Burns mines territory very similar to that covered by
American writer Thomas Pynchon in his recent media-event novel,
Vineland. Her more natural, less self-conscious work provides a
fascinating counterpoint to the crazed, manic action and dialogue of
that novel. Both writers have something valuable to say about
post-Vietnam American civilization, but Burns does so in a more fully
developed, more sympathetic, and—dare we say it—more feminine
fashion. In addition to issues of national and international importance,
she explores the stories of people who must live in and with
events—brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, children, friends
picking up pieces. Tolstoy would have been proud.